So How Are Those All-In-Public Cerebus Publishing Negotiations With Fantagraphics Going, Anyway?

Well, they're going weird.

I think I sort of get why Dave Sim wants these negotiations in public. Okay, no, I don't. But I can at least shift my perspective to a way of thinking where this seems like a good idea. I really don't quite get why they're taking place where everyone can jump in and participate. That part is beyond my ability to understand no matter how I squint my eyes and tilt my head. But it's fine theater of the 1998 message board variety, particularly if you like all of the actors and are familiar with past performances.

As far as I can tell, what's basically going on is that Dave Sim only wants to talk about Form & Void and seems to think that Fantagraphics is some sort of publisher that can provide access to audiences whose tastes are formed by the Sunday Book Review in the New York Times, an institution which he affords terrifyingly potent powers of cultural influence. I've always been confused by Sim's obsession with the New York Times' book reviewing function. When I was a younger man and gave a shit about what new prose works were coming out and what people thought about them -- as opposed to today's version of reading me, that consumes random John Marquand and Anthony Trollope books based solely on their availability at the twice-monthly library sale -- it was always the independent publication New York Review Of Books to which I bowed and scraped. I barely knew NYT had a book-reviews function, although I guess I sort of knew that this would be a pretty good get for a PR person.

So between the NYT thing and the actual offer put on the table, it looks like Sim suffers from a dim reading of what Fantagraphics actually does, or at least an easily correctible misperception. (I mean, really easily correctible, like "Um... no, that's not how we function at all." "It isn't? Oh. Sorry." I'm not holding my breath.) Fantagraphics seems to me the publisher of primo archival collections and a scattered array of underground- and alt-influenced material ranging from Prison Pit to whatever Olivier Schrauwen has coming out more than it does some sort of wine-and-cheese driven house of respectable literary funnybook making. I think a partnership between Sim and Fantagraphics puts good editions of the books out there, refocuses the comics-reading landscape's attention on those works, and allows for a modest return to all participants -- or at least a return greater than what is likely to happen if Sim goes to work on an oil rig.

Sim also brings up a stickier wicket, the idea that Fantagraphics may simply be uncomfortable in publishing some of the later Cerebus material due to the publishers' objection to that material's take on male/female relationships. I'm not sure this is a deal-killer, either, but it's a more intriguing thing to negotiate than Sim's largely imaginary conception of what Fantagraphics does. A more practical concern raised is that the length of a publishing contract to cover multiple books -- which would seem required according to what a publisher might see as rewarding from such a project -- might be tough given the changing publishing landscape. That is sort of true, in a generic sense, although it's also avoidable if you have a smart contract and that a contract may not be so flexible as to maximize every potential development at all times is a risk that all contracts have. It's not really a slam dunk issue, either. There's a Sim assertion that anyone making a deal in 2007 super-regrets it in 2012 that I can't imagine is true, at Fantagraphics or just about anywhere else.

There's also an argumentative thread to the discussion over there where people debate whether or not the work appeals and how, which seems completely bizarre to a discussion of a publishing initiative. The work is what it is.

I would think the counter-offer is that Fantagraphics make a multiple-volume set out of the first half of that series, starting with High Society, making two books from Cerebus #1-25, making three books from Church and State and all eight to be released over a four-year period after which everyone can take a step back and see where things stand. I'd be happy to write supplementary material for such a series with a picture of Jeet Heer over my desk with an X through it, if that helps.

This doesn't seem hugely complicated to me. I think there are a number of people that would like pretty good editions of some of those books, whether to try them out for the first time or to replace copies they have for a library of re-reading. I think a lot of stores would like to stock them. I think a lot of conventions and stores would like to program around such books. I think there are a few people in bookstores that would pick up a handsome edition of "Palnu And Other Stories" or whatever with a picture of Groucho Marx in a toga on it. I don't think the Sunday Book Review is likely to run a piece, but I don't all the way know because I never read it.
 
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